Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana took a break from mini-golfing with his grandson Tuesday and teed up his vision for the spaceport's future to a packed luncheon in Cape Canaveral.

"We were on the 13th hole at Cocoa mini-golf and I'm down two holes with five to go," Cabana, who is on vacation this week, said during his opening remarks at a National Space Club Florida Committee luncheon. "I gotta get back and try to beat him."

Cabana provided status updates on at least a dozen topics affecting KSC and NASA as a whole, including preparations related to the agency's upcoming Space Launch System rocket and its planned deep space missions.

"We have come a long way in the last couple years," Cabana said of the rocket that is expected to launch no earlier than late 2019. "In the middle of this year, we'll have everything completed as far as the infrastructure necessary to process and launch Orion / SLS."

That infrastructure includes High Bay 3 in the Vehicle Assembly Building; the modernized Crawler-Transporter 2 for moving SLS from the VAB to pad 39B; water-based sound suppression systems; the recent installation of a crew access arm on the mobile launcher; and work at other locations, such as a firing room in the Launch Control Center.

On NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, Cabana said teams at Boeing and SpaceX are still targeting widely circulated dates for test flights and crewed missions to the International Space Station. The Starliner and Dragon 2 spacecraft are both slated for uncrewed flights in August, while crewed missions are expected in November and December, respectively.

Boeing is also targeting next month for a pad abort test, while between August and December appears on SpaceX's radar for an inflight abort test. The operations are designed to assess safety systems that will rapidly transport crew capsules away from rockets in the event of a failure.

Overall, Cabana said, it's a busy time for the Space Coast – and April is no exception, at least for NASA-related missions. Teams at SpaceX are targeting April 2 for the company's 14th resupply mission to the ISS and two weeks later for the launch of a planet-hunting spacecraft labeled Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS. Both will launch on Falcon 9 rockets from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 40.